Notice the “full calories” part. Diet soda can still cause an insulin reaction in your body. Which means more fat storage. Not saying that exercise isn’t an important part of staying healthy, but it would be nice if food companies were more honest about how nutrition works.

Sugar intake in the US,per capita, continues to rise despite any drop in soda consumption and total caloric intake and carbohydrate intake keeps rising. It is also a hell of a lot easier to avoid a coke than it is to do and extra 30 minutes of Aerobic dancing (for example).

High calorie/sugar soft drinks are another perfect example of companies that engage in privatizing their profits while socializing the costs. There should be extremely high taxes on soft drinks that are then invested to offset the health care costs that are caused by obesity. At some point the market will reach equilibrium with soft drink sales declining to match the cost of the damage they do.